The ultimate tie

Ties are curious things.  At the last count I had forty-six of them, which seems a trifle excessive for something which can only be worn one at a time. What is even stranger is that I wear at most five of them with any regularity.  The others are simply and manifestly impossible.  Some are enormous kipper-like objects; others are indescribable shades of mud-brown; there are unknottable woollen things, slinky silk jobs which once tied cannot be unknotted; and then there are the perfectly suitable ties which have succumbed to the rigours of usage and bear those faint but all- too visible stains.

Looking at this motley collection, it is clear that it represents a cross- section through successive tie-strata of my life, with different eras mapped out by the wildly different tastes.  I recognise the ties from my time at Cambridge, when, as a post-graduate student I attempted to upgrade my sartorial appearance with the aid of a few striking and rather garish ties.  Some of these made it through to my first job, while at the same time new motifs were introduced.  These eventually triumphed, and the tie- paradigm shifted to something nearer its current state.  Most recently, a further attempted upgrade in status has caused a new influx of ties, quite radically different from the previous generation.  I like to think that they are bolder and yet more sophisticated.  In a few year's time, I shall doubtless feel about them as I do about my previous choices. Ties do not age gracefully.

If my own past ties are curious, how much stranger are those we see in shops. Whenever, on the rare occasions I wish to augment my tie collection, I search systematically through the men's clothing shops, I find few examples which I could even consider as candidates.  It is a red-letter day indeed if I do find and buy a tie which I might even wear.

Who on earth wears all those ties?  The ones made of materials which shout cheapness from every stiff pore, and which seem based either on sackcloth or plastic?  Who can want the ties in colours which have no name – unless South American gauchos have come up with them to describe obscure parts of obscure breeds of cattle?  Or the ones with patterns which make Rorschach tests look positively normal?

The dreadful truth has, of course, already been hinted at.  I myself have bought ties which were perilously close to many of these designs.  Only now have a I purged myself of the error which made me guilty of such acts.  It is clear, then, that those ties we all see for sale on the tie-racks, and which never in a month of Sundays could we envision being sold, are indeed bought, and by people just like you and me.  Worse: the ties that we buy must, in their turn, be regarded by the majority of the world as belonging to a similar group of totally inexplicable ties which ought never, in a sane universe, to be produced, let alone sold.  In other words, we are all wearing as ties what for other people are bad nightmares and sick jokes, just as for us, their own choices are crazed and deluded.  And however much the details of our taste differ, it is this terrible, inescapable fact of our mutual bad taste that is the ultimate tie which binds us all together.

(6.3.88)

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Early music, late musician

Almost single-handedly, David Munrow established the modern tradition of performing early music. He founded and directed The Early Music Consort, and was its most brilliant performer on every imaginable wind instrument. He was a natural broadcaster and a gifted writer.  As well as records, books and a television series, he created a music radio programme for children which remains a model of its kind and without a successor to this day.  Ten years ago he took his own life at the age of 34.

To mark this sad event, the Crafts Council has taken the opportunity of displaying some of his collection of musical instruments alongside its current exhibition of contemporary musical instrument manufacturers.  In one small case, there is a group of obscure South American pipes collected by Munrow before he went up to Cambridge. But as well as these melancholy because mute testaments to his enormous facility, there is an even more moving record of the man upstairs.

In the corner of the long room housing the Craft Council's studiedly elegant café, there is a video cassette recorder and TV. During the current exhibition an episode from Munrow's TV series on medieval instruments is being shown.

In his short action-packed life, Munrow dispensed and radiated huge amounts of energy.  Aside from the sheer quantity of work which he achieved, the video shows that he lived every minute with the same febrile intensity.  This impression is reinforced by his cherubic, boyish appearance. His rosy, chubby cheeks and mop of rich-brown tousled hair make him look like some precocious schoolboy; which he was.  A schoolboy almost oblivious of his powers, simply exulting in the excitement and pleasure of what he was doing. 

This is clear in his introductions to the instruments, and in his performances on them. He clearly loves them all, loves them for their idiosyncratic shapes, their impossible names; and he has a schoolboy's rude delight in their raucous, almost flatulent noises.  When he plays them, he plays with the air of a delirious jazz saxophonist, inventing anew the frenzied notes, making music of and for today.

It was this sense of discovery, this lack of dry academicism which endeared him to his huge following. That and the almost palpable throb of his energy. The same was true of his Pied Piper programmes for children.  Again, his sheer unforced love of the music was immediately apparent.  And there was no question of patronising, no Uncle David humouring the kiddies. As an eternal child himself, he felt with the same directness as they did; one of his greatest gifts was that he could communicate that.

Watching the videotape of his programme there is one small, almost insignificant detail which is the most poignant.  It is not the smiling little leprechaun, not even the eternal twinkle in his eye; it his hands, and their effortless mastery of instrument after instrument.  It is this which brings home the tragic squandering of talent which had so much to offer and was so rich. Perhaps almost too rich; whom the gods love…

(9.8.86)

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Alpha and omega

We are often happy, but it is rare for us to be serene. That serenity is a product of both happiness and a deep sense of security; the latter is notoriously hard to achieve in this troubled day and age.

Which is perhaps why my own period of true serenity dates from the time just before I went up to Cambridge. At the age of sixteen or seventeen, the world seemed to consist of little except possibilities. The future was an infinitely distant horizon, without even a hint of the coming storm clouds.  With the worst of adolescence's dark mysteries behind me, and the challenges of university still ahead, those two years at the head of the school represent a kind of endless in-between time.

Certainly my memories of them are of one long summer, with blue skies and the sun roaring through the classroom windows without a break. Outside,  young loins girded themselves as leather struck willow on luxuriant bottle-green grass.

And yet it is not for these commonplace boyhood visions that I value those years.  In truth, such elements formed only the most dimly perceived of backdrops to the real excitement, and even the real world, which was to be found in the classroom.  For at this time I and my fellow classmates attained a kind of intellectual acme, a virtuoso mastery of a subject, which was never to be matched.

And what a subject - mathematics, the root of all science, the root, that is, of all knowing.  At its best, mathematics equips you to see the universe as a huge equation.  It reveals the inherent order of things. Of course this is only an approximation, or rather, the real equation of the universe is too complicated to solve.  It is this terrible fact, learned later on, which embitters and defeats many a mathematician.  But at the age of seventeen or so, there are no such doubts.  You have reached an enchanted plateau of knowledge where for the first time you can analyse and comprehend an entire world, albeit idealised.

And analyse it we did.  I remember well the frisson of excitement as I read each problem.  The desired result was always painfully elegant, consisting perhaps of just five or six symbols related in a strangely new yet harmonious fashion.  The thrill was not just in taking the seven or eight fundamental formulae and winning through to this unlikely yet beautiful result; it was in the sense of being initiated through that result into another mystery of the world, of another corner of the curtain of creation being lifted.  Each problem solved was a conquest of life.

In those brief years, I felt as if I were totally in command of the external world.  True, my version of that world consisted of frictionless rods, smooth slopes, and perfectly inelastic spheres.  No matter, I had dominion over it through my obedient alphas and omegas.  Allied, then, to the happiness I derived from solving problem after problem, of producing like a sculptor or musician the final, balanced, perfect form, there was a deeper, pervasive sense of calm that flowed from that never-to-be-repeated sense of control. Whence my cherished, but lost, sixth-form serenity.

(6.8.87)

See also Moody Sonnets - AI’s Secret

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Talking to myself

After my Part III exams at Cambridge, I decided to teach myself German.  I did this in my room at the top of the Queen’s tower, opposite the chapel and clock tower.  From its windows you had one of the best views in Cambridge, looking out over the plush sward of Trinity’s Great Court, with the Great Hall on the left and the porters’ lodge in the top right-hand corner.  During the month that I had to learn the language, I would often sit in the alcove, watching the world go by, and talking to myself.

In fact I spent most of that period talking to myself in one way or another.  Much of the time it was in German, since I need the sound of a word to learn it.  Interspersed with my constant repetition of words and phrases, mostly out loud, I would commune with myself on nothing at all.  Since my friends had already gone down, I rarely spoke to anyone else.  I can honestly say that during that month I had some of the best conversations ever, and found my mind pullulating with ideas and thoughts.

Similarly, I have found other times of my life when I have been alone fruitful in this way.  Whether this was when I had just moved down to London, and was unemployed and so had nothing better to do, or when I was on holiday wandering the Greek islands, at such times I have found anything and everything was liable to send my thoughts racing after some mental butterfly, only to relinquish it at the sight of another, yet more brightly coloured or elusive.

I remember those times with fond affection, partly because like most memories, they are bathed in a warm glow of nostalgia which smooths out the rough edges of inconvenience, and partly because like youth, they represent a lost time to me.  Today, in the hustle and bustle of my very full yuppie life, I am rarely on my own and never idle.  It is therefore a long time since I have had a really good heart to heart with myself.

Though my present lifestyle has ample compensations, I do miss this talking.  I miss the immediate understanding I can offer, the absence of any need to fill in details or sketch their background. Instead, I can proceed with concocting thoughts at their most fresh and daring.  With myself, the feedback is so instant that the inspiration is rarely lost.  Bouncing an idea back and forth between my split yet unitary self is like an image in two parallel mirrors, shadowing itself to infinity.

I feel less fecund as a result. My thoughts and inspirations are few and far between, I must husband them.  Inevitably my work eats up many.  However, at least those that are left, poor as they may be, become all the richer for being rare and more occasional.  Perhaps that is why I produce these essays when I can, why they represent no drudgery, but an almost self-indulgent luxury.  Often they are sparked off by one of these little illuminations.  After chewing on it for a few minutes, savouring its particular insight, enjoying the afterglow of minor creativity, I will often try to fix it by committing it to a written form.  In the course of filling the page, new thoughts may, sometimes, emerge.  If these thoughts start to match up to the initial inspiration, I begin to feel again the old joys of the interior monologue.  And so do I.

(22.6.86)

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